Wagner Urban Logistics LLC Data Center, Richmond, Virginia

Wagner Urban Logistics, tied to the Richmond firm Centra Logistics, proposed eight data center buildings totaling a million square feet on 200 acres off Darbytown Road in Varina, Henrico County, Virginia. The Henrico Planning Commission rejected the required permit before October 2025, Wagner withdrew the plan, and the county later denied its vested rights claim and rejected its appeal, leaving the site blocked for data centers.

It was the first project filed under Henrico's rule, in effect since June 2025, requiring a provisional use permit for every data center instead of automatic approval. Planning director Joe Emerson denied Wagner's vested rights claim on December 10, 2025, finding Wagner did not own the property when it filed the claim and that state law grants vested rights only to landowners, not contract purchasers. Wagner had 30 days from the Dec. 10 letter to appeal to the county's Board of Zoning Appeals.

Wagner closed on the 200-acre site on November 14, 2025, paying the pharmaceutical company Fareva $13.5 million for it, before the vested rights decision came down. Two days after the December 10 denial, Wagner filed a new plan for the same land: seven warehouses totaling 1.8 million square feet for distribution, which needed no rezoning, permit or public hearing. Henrico's planning staff approved that warehouse plan administratively in January 2026.

Varina supervisor Tyrone Nelson said the two plans could not both go forward. "I feel like if they put in for the warehouse piece, you can't do the data center piece and the warehouse at the same time," he said. "I think that's confusing the community to a certain degree." On February 26, 2026 the Henrico Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously rejected Wagner's appeal of the vested rights denial.

Nelson told the board the supervisors would have denied the data center permit had they gotten the chance: "I can confidently say the board of supervisors would have denied this provisional-use permit, but we didn't get the opportunity to do so," he said. Afterward, Wagner said he did not yet know whether the company would appeal to court or go ahead with the approved warehouses instead.